It's not exactly my backyard, but since there wasn't a "birds at work" thread...

When I first moved here (Melbourne, Australia), I caught the end of a story on TV about a pair of peregrine falcons in the CBD. The previous inhabitants at the site had died after eating illegally poisoned pigeons, and it was a big deal that the nest was inhabited again, finally, and that there were chicks.

I didn't catch where, exactly they were nesting, and had mostly forgotten about it until a few months ago. My company moved offices, and I found myself with a front row cubicle, right across the street and just a few floors down from the nest - basically at perfect height for that initial swoop.

Needless to say, the times that they are most active might not be my most productive, and I'm not the only one who stops to say "look look look!" when they go speeding by the windows.

Sorry, no photos of my own, but there is a short article about them .

I've been seeing lots of Mourning Doves this year. A good year for them? Perhaps, like for Blackbirds last year.

Here's a great link - love the pictures from NGM - I wish I could say they were my backyard birds.

This is not exactly my backyard, but it's quite funny anyway. I saw the Shearwater concert in Gothenburg, in a very small venue. So... when Shearwater eventually get big enough to play the huge arena in Gothenburg, they may well have a couple of Eurasian Eagle-owls watching the show. There is a couple of these birds who have decided that the Ullevi sports and music arena is a perfect place to live:

http://www.gotevent.se/uvar/default.asp

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxBNkfsRLRI

yeah, i thought so, too, they look like slim versions of the chubby sparrows that always came begging for french fries at the local mcdonalds, when we were skipping school and hanging there, ten years back.

We just moved to a new house just over a week ago, and since then I've seen a small raptor hanging around in the backyard. Today after work I was out filling the bird feeders and noticed there were two of them, either hanging around together or battling for position. I got my camera and a tele lens and took this:



()

Tonight there are at least three of them -- I think there's a nest somewhere on the neighbor's property. They're making a big ol' racket, sounds like giant squeaky dog toys interspersed with more hawk-like shrieks.

As I came here to read about the hawks, two very small, very young sparrows just dropped onto my AC unit. Literally dropped. I can't get to them for obvious reasons (4th floor, wheelchair, the other window doesn't open, etc.), but only one is chirping--rather frantically, it seems--and they seem a little downy for so late in the year. The other seems ok, but the loud one may be injured.

Injured wildlife wrecks me.

Plus, I have a mental picture of nasty little kids knocking them off of the roof or an upper balcony...